


Aceldama

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Christian Bible (Old Testament), תנ"ך | Tanakh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-12-21
Updated: 2005-12-21
Packaged: 2018-01-25 01:42:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1624874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A coin, a betrayal, a kiss.  This the life of Judas Iscariot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Aceldama

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Talullah

 

 

*

_"And it was known unto all the dwellers at Jerusalem; insomuch as that field is called in their proper tongue, Aceldama, that is to say, The field of blood. For it is written in the book of Psalms, Let his habitation be desolate, and let no man dwell therein." --The Acts 1:19-20_

*

Judas floated soleless under a sky dark enough for a beating. He didn't care, the school at his back, the future at his feet, the towered white city that one day he'd own. He did see the raven again, perched on a tree branch, but it flew off as the trumpets called the priests to worship. What were ravens and bruises when he'd replace King David as the voice of his people? The elders had spoken: he would become a rabbi, and when he spoke, birds would freeze mid-flight, rivers would crash to a halt, his father would burn his switch, and people would drop to their knees.

As Judas began to hunt, he mouthed a prayer.

There. The woman in the doorway, a Pharisee stuffed with candied fruit, made of it, and Judas wanted to bite her, that juicy bitch who ate her fill and his. His belly rumbled as he watched her swaying to the music that seeped from the tavern, gold glinting at her wrists and ankles. But no, her bullish husband was charging toward her, terrified she'd eat more of his money.

Him? The scarecrow scratching his balls as he exited the wine shop held promise until their eyes met. Isaac, a friend of his father's who sometimes reached for him during the men's dice game, fingers slick as a frog's belly while he rasped, "Sixteen, but still pretty as a girl. Give me a kiss for luck, you little bastard." The asses around him always brayed with laughter, his father the loudest, as Judas wriggled free. He'd take his revenge another time, from a different angle, and backed into a circle of trees where that morning a priest had been singing of Moses.

As the traders' shouts faded, lamps began to glow through windows, sealing the day's end. Soon the night- watchmen would start their rounds so he had to choose quickly; here, justice was swift and unforgiving. But God would understand. God would forgive. He always had before. Besides, tonight was different, special, necessary in a new way--a sacrifice, and everyone knew God loved a sacrifice.

When the last of the crowd converged, calling final wishes for peace and prosperity, the sun suddenly collapsed behind the city wall. In the oily dark, men became hyenas laughing over their kill. Above them an orange-rimmed cloud appeared as if dropped by the hand of God. It spat out ravens, which in a flutter of wings and sharp cries coalesced into the shape of a man.

Before the man turned, heading down the street, Judas saw his face and forgot to breathe, thinking of Manoah, his wife, and the angel: `We shall surely die, because we have seen God.' If God was young and looked like lightning against a black sky. Judas could feel that lightning, the strike of connection, smell the charge as he burned.

Then even as he trembled Judas could hear the rabbi's voice chastising him for his fantasy. An illusion, of course, a trick of the new dark, and he'd reacted like an idiot, as usual, building the mundane into a miracle, when everyone knew miracles were a thing of the past. Still, the silk purse surely confirmed God's approval, a reward for this morning's decision to become his voice on Earth, and Judas moved, circling behind his target, craving the thrill of contact, of a void filled.

A small bump, the slightest tug, and the money would be his, enough to educate a dozen priests, and this rich foreigner, with his too-smooth skin and his hair like new furrows of earth, had no idea, walking with the slow, arrogant pace of the born-rich, perpetually veiled from reality, a blind gazelle at a watering hole, even humming under his breath.

But, as Judas reached for the prize, he realized that the man was counting, a slow melodic stream of numbers that never stopped, an algebraic hymn. He kept counting even when the purse lay nestled like a dying bird in Judas' hand, and kept counting with the same pleasure as the night closed around him like raven wings.

*

One foot over the threshold, and his father grabbed him. Grabbed him then slammed him against the wall, hard enough to shower baked mud. He stank of the beer, sweat, and urine staining his tunic, his eyes crusted with sleep. Froth like sea foam gathered at the corners of his lips and his head angled to catch any words his ragged stump of an ear might miss. He was a monster.

Judas had invented a game for times like this, and in his head began to list his secret treasures, proving the elders wrong: imagination was a saving grace, not a curse. The first wave of pain turned bearable just as his father lashed out again.

"Lying, thieving prick!"

A kick to the hip followed and, fighting tears, Judas scrambled into a corner, side by side with moldy crumbs and skinny fleas. Pain made him a child again. Think of the treasures, he told himself, of the silk purse stuffed with coins, of a future as the voice of God, and deny. "I don't know--"

"I found this, you little turd!"

Judas' box of treasures crashed to the floor beside him. The pearl necklace slithered near his foot. The empty perfume flask revealed its greasy innards. The clay amulet exposed its underbelly. "I found them," he said desperately. "People threw them away--"

A sharp crack as his father backhanded him. "I'd like to know the rich whore who threw this away!" He snatched up an ivory comb then dropped it in Judas' lap. "I should've drowned you the day your mother shit you out."

"I'm sorry--"

"Sorry my ass! You sound just like your mother. You were going to sell this crap and leave me, just like that lying slut."

Another fiery kick. As Judas tried to climb inside himself, the silk purse tumbled from under his tunic. Tumbled then opened, and a silver coin rolled out, clicking across the floor until it fell down between a crack in the stones. Oh God, he thought. Oh God, please...

The old man's eyes went wide. "You dirty whore's son, what have you--"

A knock at the door stopped him. Then he called, "Get your hairy arse in here, Isaac, and help me teach this runty magpie a lesson. The quick-fingered bugger could've landed me in prison--"

In the doorway was a stranger whose head brushed the doorway. He had a lion's face. For the second time that day Judas remembered Manoah, his wife, and the angel. Despite the pain, he curved his body into a bow while even his father fell silent.

When Judas looked up, the man held the silk purse in his hand. No miracle, then, just more proof that money ruled the world.

"This belongs to my master." His voice was a tangle of vines. "If a single coin is missing, he demands restitution."

"Just one coin. It fell. I'm sure I can..." Judas slid to the crack where the coin had fallen, trying to work his fingers between the stones, trying to crawl between them to hide from the man's eyes, from God's, wishing to turn into a coin.

"You want restitution? Take this then." His father scooped up the necklace, his thumb over the broken clasp, and offered it to the man. "Very valuable. No need to involve the authorities."

"That's not acceptable."

"Then how about this?" This time, his father offered the ivory comb. In the light from the oil lamp it looked like a clawed bony hand. "It belonged to my beloved wife and before her a Roman lady. A fine gift for your master's mistress."

"Not acceptable."

On his knees, aware that reality was shifting but unsure in what direction, Judas dug until blood oozed. The coin remained out of reach, invisible even when he pressed his eye to the chink, and when he tried to pry up the surrounding stones they refused to budge. "Father, help." But even then the stones stayed fixed.

His father rose to his feet, blowing on his scraped fingers. "Look, it's not coming out. Can't you explain this to your master? Ask him to show some mercy?"

The man tilted his lion's head and roared. "No mercy. He demands restitution."

"So you've said," his father muttered. His face contorted into a fox's cunning smirk. "How about we toss for it? A roll of the die." He drew one from a fold in his robes. "If my number comes up, then you'll forget about this little unpleasantness. If your number appears--"

The lion pointed at Judas. "Then he comes with me. Not negotiable."

"Father," Judas said, not sure he'd heard correctly, not sure which was worse, the devil you knew or the angel you didn't--if he was an angel, and not a foreigner from some land that grew giants with gold hair and skin. "God..."

"That name has no place here." He turned back to Judas' father. "Him or nothing."

"But..." His father's mouth screwed and unscrewed like the rusted lid of a jar. "Fine. Lucky six for me. What's your number?"

"Three."

He extended the die and the lion blew, expelling air like burnt honey.

As the die spun on the table, Judas tried to pray but couldn't decide what to ask for. Save me, he thought, just as the die stopped, announcing his future in bone.

"Come. Our master is waiting."

He still didn't...This was... "It's wrong," Judas told him, told them, told himself. "I'm worth more than a single coin."

The lion shrugged then tossed the purse on the table. "There. Now you're worth thirty."

*

Judas rode with his cheek resting against the lion's back. Sometimes the wind flipped the long hair against his lips and once he tasted it, sweet as a fig. Above them, the moon curled on its side like a snake or a scythe ready to fall.

They'd been traveling for what felt like hours along a street narrow as a gullet and flanked by white-barked trees, then thin carved columns that stuck like ribs from the earth. Sometimes an animal seemed to run alongside them, a leopard, a bear, watching with flat silver eyes.

Had he somehow blinked and missed a break in the city wall? Or had he passed out from the pain? More important, what would happen to him when he arrived? When Judas asked the man directly, he was ignored. "I was going to be a rabbi," he added, not even sure the man could hear him over the wind. "Does that matter?"

No response again, but the body in his arms shook with silent laughter. He was still shaking when they drew up to a flat mountainous wall. In the grey mock-dark, the stones assembled into a face.

Judas, peering past the lion's shoulder, searched for a door, glimpsed a mouth, then nothing. "I don't understand."

He might have addressed the wall. Then the lion did just that, guided the horse right before it then leaned forward, whispering in a foreign tongue. A door wavered into view, wood crisscrossed with iron, a knocker shaped like the sun. At the third knock, the door swung open, and they rode in.

Torchlight, marble, and water. That's all he saw of the courtyard before the lion leapt from the horse, pulling Judas down after him.

"Go there," he said, pointing to an open doorway beneath the arcaded gallery.

"Is that where he is? The master?"

"Go." He turned Judas in the right direction and pushed.

When Judas corrected his stumble and looked back, both horse and rider had vanished. It was now quiet as a sepulcher: no slaves moved around the square-cut fountain, no dogs ran to sniff his hand, no music spilled from the windows.

Just inside the city's west wall stood the ruins of a pagan temple dedicated to some old dark god whose name no one remembered. The older kids talked about blood sacrifices, children gutted on the altar, that if you walked too close the earth would swallow you whole. A few years ago, thirteen and eager to prove himself to the kids who hated him, he'd done it on a dare: walked through the broken gate separating the living and the dead, past broken demon faces, smashed pillars, a tree without leaves.

Not even weeds could survive there, the earth unpaved and disturbingly soft, while the sun, shining brightly on the city side of the gate, couldn't cut the grey air within. Fog? Smoke? Not sure, but it had wrapped tight around his lungs, and he'd started to panic, scrambling for something small enough to carry out, a trophy. He'd run faster and faster, hearing noises all around him, sure the earth was opening to suck him down.

A sharp turn around a corner, and a triple punch to his heart, gut, and balls: blood. Streams of it like red rain, soaking the earth, a field of blood pouring from screaming children, vulture-faced devils devouring them, one staring at him with its great cavernous maw open to its bowels. He'd screamed, the high scream of an animal on a butcher's block, screamed and run like a dog.

He'd run full circle and ended up here. Only the nightmare he'd seen had been painted, just a hidden decorated wall its destroyers had missed or kept to scare children straight to the true God, and this place was nothing like that, just too quiet and his father had gambled him away and he hurt everywhere and he was so hungry, always hungry, and inside this huge white tomb a man made of raven bones waited for him...

Judas knelt at the tiled edge of the fountain and splashed water on his face, two-handed cups of it over and over until the heat and fear and pain died down. Ignored the impulse to lie on his back in the water until it cleaned away his life. Bury, deny, survive.

Standing took effort, force of will to straighten his legs and back, but he succeeded, with enough strength left to command his feet forward until he reached the gallery. Blood didn't cover the walls, just the flames casting a red glow while vines, not snakes, wound around the columns. His God loved him, and if he'd transgressed in His eyes by stealing, the cause was good; this was not a case of Sodom and a vengeful angel.

This thought carried Judas inside where a narrow hallway stretched before him. On the floor, stars and the moon; on the ceiling, caves and white-barked trees. He walked upended to the staircase ahead then followed it, each breath echoing. The stairs seemed infinite. In the flickering torchlight so did his shadow.

At the top, he found a closed door and paused. What lay ahead? Judgment? Servitude? When his knock went unanswered, he opened the door with the same hesitance that always marked his return home. There, he might find his father passed out at the table, vomit pooled at his feet, or gambling or brawling with his friends; more than once he'd caught his father with a whore between his thighs, their bread-money between hers.

Here...A dozen blinks didn't alter reality. If Goliath had picked up Judas' home, his old home, and held it to his mouth, puffing until it expanded beyond rational sense, he'd produce this room, and then only if a thousand men worked for a thousand years to design its vaulted ceiling, its red and gold columns that towered like cypresses, its arched doorways, carved moldings, and frescoed walls, its vases of peacock feathers and seats covered in leopard skin.

And if Solomon had commanded a feast for all Israel, prepared by an army of cooks, he'd produce the food that covered the tables. Some of it Judas recognized: the piles of figs, apricots, and pomegranates; the mounds of goat cheese, olives, and bread; the platters of lamb, chicken, and fish; the hills of cakes bursting with apples, almonds, and dates. Some of it he didn't: roasted animals wafting the scent of cumin and mustard, steam rising from their tender flesh; fruit in rainbow colors so ripe that juice beaded them; sweet things twisted into a thousand different shapes and glistening with honey.

Compelled by his belly, glancing furtively around, he stole a handful of grapes. When no furious server appeared, he snatched a hunk of lamb, gobbling it down, then some cheese, a slice of chicken, the wing of some divine bird. Greed overtook caution, and Judas stuffed into his mouth whatever he could reach, barely chewing, reveling in the taste, the wondrous glut, driven by a mad lust for one perfect moment of satisfaction.

And he found that moment then passed it, unable to stop, juice dripping down his chin, down his tunic, grease smearing his hands and face. He was an animal, a wolf, and if anyone tried to stop him now he'd suck the marrow from his bones. The thirst struck, monumental, overpowering, and he seized a jug of wine, emptying it down his throat, not caring about the mess, only the need.

He'd barely finished when his stomach clenched, muscles seizing, and as the jug shattered at his feet he dropped to his knees and puked. Everything came out, not just the food and drink, but the rage and pain, the confusion and fear, until he was drained.

When Judas finally raised his head, wiping his mouth, a doorway caught his eye. Caught it and kept it, because it was painted as a lion's gaping mouth. Staggering up, he pitched through it half-blind and fumbled forward until the hallway curved into a new room. Steam laced with perfume surrounded him, the soft murmur of running water--a bathing chamber with three pale green pools, as if the house once again knew what he needed.

His clothes in a jumbled pile, he climbed into the nearest bed of water onto a mosaic cloud. He let himself sink to the bottom, staring up at a whale swimming through the sea, and wished to be inside its blue-black skin. Imagine that life, the freedom, escape with the flip of a tail, no cares, just floating through an endless ocean...

The whale winked, and Judas started, coughing myrrh. It struck him that he might be dreaming, that this whole place, this whole night, might be the fabrication of a sleep-fevered mind, and he was suddenly more tired than he'd ever been, his bones softened to milk, his lids marble. Move or drown, so he did, like a sleepwalker, his body weighted and weightless. A corridor, a few turns, and a bed appeared, stolen from Solomon, big as an ocean with sheets of a soft silky blue.

Judas slept.

*

The wind laughed. Then Judas woke up and there was no wind but the laugh still hung in the air, hung then fell, looping around his neck, pulling him up. The room ended in a balcony, and his feet took him forward before reason replaced sleep. At the last instant, caution kicked in, and he stayed low, a spider in the shadows, looking down at the wall-lined garden below, a small colonnaded shrine at its heart, a torch in a sconce lighting its facade. Voices sounded from within, one the lion's, the other...It had to be the man made of ravens.

They were talking about him. Judas knew it even with the words blurred, his future passing from mouth to mouth, shared like pieces of fruit, like he was a piece of fruit to be eaten and shit back into the earth--or like a coin, passing from hand to hand with no life or real consequence.

He found the stairs easily and slipped noiselessly down, no sandals or clothes to thump or rustle. Easy also to find the garden, just an open doorway directly beneath his room, and when he curled around the left side, the stone seemed to curl back.

The lion was speaking. "Why not one of us?"

"Where's the challenge in that? This way, at the exact moment he's trying to prove the virtue of his favorites, I'll expose their vice."

Once, at school, a boy had brought in a wooden box, a gift from a rich relative. It looked ordinary enough, but, with the press of the thumb, hidden drawers popped open, each one revealing a treasure: a tiny glass die, a square of sugar, a silver ring. He spoke like that, the master, the one who owned him now, his voice full of secrets and treasure. Judas' thumbs itched.

"Is that all this is to you, a game?"

"You're too short-sighted, just like the boy. This is about the future, a new era of sin. Nothing breeds sin like a strong call against it."

"You're still giving him what he wants."

"He'll take it no matter what. This way, he and his precious son see the limitations of their grand gesture."

"But why this boy? He's far from the first you--"

"Apart from all else," the man made of ravens said, "just look at him. Come here, Judas."

He'd flung the words slingshot hard, and Judas clung to the jamb, willing himself part of it, cool stone, not skin exposed to the eyes of these strange men who'd moved to the shrine's portico.

"Your master is calling you, boy." The lion sounded impatient. "Obey or--"

"Aza won't hurt you, Judas. You're under my protection now."

What had looked like lush grass from the balcony turned out to be tiny lines of inlaid emerald. "Who are you?" he asked, his head still bowed.

"In my language?" The answer was a birdsong. Then he laughed. "In yours...Look up, Judas, and I'll tell you. That's better. I am Bel."

He had a cat's gold eyes, and looking into them Judas had the sense of falling from somewhere high, falling off a cliff, a cloud, off the edge of the sun, then caught, studied, exposed...

A warm arm was under his back, another around his shoulders, fur under his naked back. His bruises were gone. So was Aza, and Bel sat thigh to thigh beside him on a couch covered with leopard skin. The curling ends of Bel's hair melded with the dead leopard's black spots. There were stars on the floor.

"Have some wine," Bel said.

After a few quick sips, a thin band of euphoria closed around his panic. He was intensely aware of his own nudity, of the sweetness on his tongue, of the fur caressing his back, of Bel, who had a way of breathing, of being, that brought all of these things together. It left Judas tongue-tongued, scared of what he might say or do.

As the silence stretched, Bel took the glass, returned it to the table where a lamp burned perfumed oil. He moved like the flame with quick flickering gestures. "Do you hate me, Judas, because I made your father name your price?"

Bel's robe had ridden high, exposing a dark gold star on the paler gold of his thigh, and Judas' feelings had the coherence of shattered glass. "No."

"Some men waste a lifetime wondering what they're worth. Once you know, you're free."

"Except you own me."

"And has it been so terrible? Escape from your father, more food than you've ever seen, a bath and bed? Wine in my garden?"

"I had plans," Judas said. "I was going to be a rabbi. I was going to devote my life to--"

"The tyrant? You think your new father would be any different? Both will crush you on a whim."

"And you're different?" A hollow question, with Bel unlike anyone he'd ever met or imagined. Even God couldn't hold so many hidden drawers.

"They demand complete obedience. I'll give you a choice. Always."

"A choice of your fist or your foot?"

"Nothing so obvious. For instance, you want your freedom. I'll free you for a small price."

"Some choice! I have no money."

His father would've backhanded him for his rudeness, the rabbis scolded him, but Bel only laughed. "I thought you had imagination, Judas. I don't want money."

"Then what?"

"A kiss." When Judas didn't answer, Bel said, "You find me ugly. A monster."

The truth didn't fit into words. "No."

"You don't trust me? I promise: one kiss and you're free. Here," he added, extending his open hand. An arrow- shaped key rested in it. "Take this. It will unlock every door in my home. Of course, once you're free, you can stay here as my guest."

"But I can leave if I want?" As if he had somewhere to go. As if he wanted to.

"If you like." Bel's mouth, precisely decadent as the emerald grass, curved downward.

"A kiss of peace? Is that what you want?"

"Peace is dull, Judas." He said a word that sounded like chaos. "That's what you were made for. But kiss me how you like and you're free."

Despite everything, Judas meant to kiss him quickly, a token act, a means to an end. But facing Bel meant seeing him in total, not fractions anymore, and the total of Bel was beyond rational computation, the formula exposed for the order of the universe. Not just his beauty--that was dimmer than whatever force ran through him, the same force that gave a star its light. The idea of touching that force, even through the cover of skin, opened something inside him, a box nailed shut years ago.

So, instead of peace, Judas gave him chaos. He relied on an instinct that felt like memory, every action fated: like water changing course, he shifted, pulling Bel over him, holding him there, mouth open, tongue snaking, hips rising in an obscene wave. Bel's hair fell like night around them, primeval dark, the womb, the grave, the world before men, while his eyes were stars. He tasted sweet and smoky, fruit dried in the sun and brought back to life in wine, and Judas couldn't stop licking Bel's tongue, sucking it; he wanted to be a cherry so Bel could bite him, split him in two, drink his juice.

Bel wanted it too, stiff as Judas and making thunder-growls as he pinned Judas to the couch and devoured him. Judas tried to thrust up, but with so little space between them he could only rub, so he did, rubbed against Bel and gorged on his kisses, rubbed and gorged, rubbed and gorged, so wet, hot, and raw that he really was going to split in two, past and present bisected. He begged with his hands, stroking Bel's back through thin cloth, the two faint ridges framing his spine, old scars maybe, and he wanted to kiss these marks of vulnerability, wanted to--

The kiss broke, and Bel half-rose over him. "Judas, do you know what I want to do to you?" Then he bent, pressed his red lips to Judas' ear, and gave the answer.

It was a list that defied perversity, detailing acts Judas had never even imagined, filthy, degrading, deviant, and so exciting that Judas began to moan. Bel didn't stop, piling depraved image upon depraved image, an obscene litany while Judas writhed under him, blind, breathless, slick with sweat.

"--and when I'm finished," Bel said, "I'll kiss you like this."

`This' meant gentle as the brush of feathers, peace instead of chaos. Unbearable then beyond when Bel suddenly thrust his tongue deep into Judas' mouth. Judas finally did split, clutching Bel's strong scarred back. He was the one who bit, sinking his teeth into Bel's lower lip, wanting to drink while the juice spilled between them, his and Bel's, together.

Finally, when everything had softened and slowed, Bel stroked Judas' hair and whispered against his throat, "You're free now."

No, Judas thought, as sleep wound through him. He was home.

*

He dreamed of his mother.

The hair gave her away, the same unusual color as his. `The Northern curse,' his father called it, and it was all she wore now, standing somewhere familiar, but with the edges planed away he couldn't fix the location, just knew it was a temple at night. Instead of an altar, a tree grew, or had once grown: leafless now, black-trunked, ravens sat on its low-hanging branches. His mother stretched out underneath, arms spread wide, as if calling the birds above her. Then the sun exploded, and there was fire, fire everywhere...

Judas started awake. He was in the sea-blue bed and Bel lay between his thighs, watching him, his mouth hot and tight around Judas' cock. The sun was still whole, radiating behind Bel, turning the air gold.

Shock upon shock, and he inhaled all the gold air in the room, all the air in the universe, so much it seared his lungs, then let it out in a hard gasp. He didn't know where to put his hands, only that if he didn't grab something he'd melt or die or float away--a handful of silk, fanning from his fist, and Bel's bare shoulder, so smooth his fingers slipped and tangled in Bel's hair, tight enough to straighten a curl.

An impulse struck to apologize for the pain and for his body, for its angles, sweat, and hair, but Bel's glance killed it. The lust he'd seen on Isaac's face, on his father's with the whores, had been selfish and ugly; they would've fucked a corpse, a hole in the wall, with the same mulish expression. It wasn't just that Bel was giving pleasure, but the hungry way he delivered it, the pure, fierce concentration on Judas' smallest reaction. This elated Judas as much as Bel's sucking mouth, as much as the teasing strikes of Bel's tongue.

Then the heat faded, though Bel's fingers stayed wrapped around him. "Stop thinking, Judas, and feel. That's what you were made for." His hand began to move with quick deliberate strokes while he bent to lick with butterfly lightness.

Judas swelled. Ego and cock together, and he opened the darkest part of himself, offered it to Bel, who took it eagerly, sucking wetly now, saliva dripping down his chin, down Judas' cock, his lips sluttishly red, his eyes shining.

Control gone, reason broken, Judas braced himself on Bel's shoulders and shoved. Judas made a sound, a rough torn sound, and Bel echoed it, triumph in his eyes. That was enough, more than enough, too much. Encased inside Bel, Judas became part of him, a bond sealed with semen, a flood of it greedily swallowed.

He must have called Bel's name because, as his body relaxed from its arc, the room bounced it back at him, leaving invisible impressions even in the sunlight. Not, not sunlight, but another trick of this unpredictable house: heavy doors had been shut against the balcony, bringing together two halves of a painted golden orb. A clever craftsman had formed small holes, and light shone through from lamps rigged on the inside.

Real or not, Judas basked, while with a last draining kiss Bel moved closer, a proprietary hand cupping Judas' spent cock, his own hard against Judas' thigh. "I know it was your first time," he said, "because if another man had done this to you, I would've erased him from existence."

Judas laughed then laughed again at the strange new sound. "How do you erase a man from existence?"

"Pull his soul from his mouth and feed it to a lion." Bel grinned at him.

"Is that what you did before me? When you weren't someone's first?"

"You're a first among firsts."

Judas' belly spoiled the moment, growling like a dog. "Sorry."

"No, I'm sorry! What kind of host feeds himself and neglects his guest? Shut your eyes," he added. "I have a surprise for you."

And it was a surprise: Judas, wanting to be fed from Bel's own body and sated with cream, received instead Bel's honey-smeared fingers in his mouth. The honey was startlingly sweet, apple-tinged, unlike anything Judas had ever tasted, even at his feast the previous night, and he licked Bel's fingers clean.

"Do you like it?"

"More," Judas said, opening his eyes.

Bel was on his side, propped on one elbow, a glass bowl balancing on his hip. He was still hard. "The bees that produce this honey can be found only in one place on earth, a garden far to the east," Bel said, pushing his slick fingers back between Judas' lips. "The beekeeper tries to hoard it, but I know how to snake past his objections." He winked. "I'll have a taste in his honor." Placing the bowl on the bedside table beside an ebony idol with jade eyes and goat's feet, he rolled onto his back then fed himself. He ate messily, honey running down his chin, spilling onto his chest, where it trickled lower.

"You're forgetting about me."

"No." Scooping more honey, Bel anointed his nipples and cock until he looked like a second idol, gold, black, and decadent. "I'm waiting to see how hungry you really are."

"I...What are the limits?"

"Limits?" Bel's ever-hovering grin split wide. "Limits are for transgressing. I thought you knew that, my tasty little thief. No, do whatever you want. Act out every filthy dream you forgot until now. The more lust you show, the more force, the more anger and passion, the more I'll enjoy it. Or," he added, giving Judas a push, "are you a dog that's been kicked too many times? Did your father and those priests break your spirit?"

It was easy after that. Easy to straddle Bel, hold him down, and kiss that sweet sticky mouth, to rub back against the cock cleaving his ass, to bite that bared gold throat, those tight brown nipples. Bel had told the truth: the rougher Judas was, the louder he moaned, the higher his hips rose, and it made Judas wild and even harder than before. He grabbed Bel's long hair, forcing his head up, and rammed his cock into that pretty mouth, fucked his face while Bel clutched his ass, pushing him deeper.

At a mocking gleam in Bel's eyes, he dragged himself free, a flash of mourning that ended when he moved between Bel's thighs, grasped his thick cock, and filled his mouth. Thrilling to break that ancient taboo, to be a whore for another man, and he licked and sucked in a frenzy. Bel incited him, calling Judas his pretty cock-hungry slut, his hot hungry bitch, making vows to shame the worst Sodomite while urging him to suck harder, hands on the back of Judas' head to fill him completely.

When Bel whispered, "I want to see your face dripping with my cream," Judas nodded and drew back while Bel wrapped his hand around Judas', jerking roughly. It came like a benediction, and Judas offered himself completely, rapturously, while with a low moan, Bel left his mark.

Afterward, still panting, Bel pulled Judas to his side then with his thumbs rubbed the semen like a balm on Judas' lips. "Tell me you're mine, Judas."

He did.

*

There was no past, only an endless present with Bel. While the key remained in his possession, Judas left it gathering dust with his tunic. Why leave Paradise, where every desire was instantly gratified?

When fatigue set in, he slept wrapped in Bel's arms on the finest silk sheets in a bed with a red silk canopy supported by bent-backed patriarchs, all with heads turned to face the center.

When hunger struck, food appeared in any form he desired and Bel fed him from gold plates; perpetually starved for most of his life, Judas' body began to fill out, take a man's strong shape instead of a mewling boy's, helped by laps in the pool.

When a quiet mood hit, he wandered into the library with its ceiling curved like a dome, its perfume of old cedar and crumbling papyrus, its endless rows of shelves and cabinets. There, on a couch, Bel at his side and petting him like a cat, he'd pore over ancient scrolls, studying their undecipherable symbols, their strange drawings.

When even that became too taxing, he'd use Bel as his book, asking a question and listening with awe to the answer. Bel knew more than all the rabbis in the school, more than anyone on earth, and he had an opinion on everything. While Judas didn't always agree or even understand, the slippery waves of Bel's arguments always impressed him to his knees.

Bel believed that the balance of power determined the nature of good and evil, not any inherent quality in either, and that God, a selfish tyrant, cast his ethical shadows on a whim. "All religions," he said, "operate that way. Look at the Greeks. When Prometheus shares fire from his divine father's storehouse, he's cast into Tartarus to be tortured for eternity. Your tyrant's no better than Zeus, hoarding knowledge like fire, and when it's shared, rewards generosity with exile."

The pomegranate was Bel's favorite fruit because it came into being under the earth, with Etemenanki, the ziggurat at the temple of Marduk, his favorite building because from its highest point you could spit in the eye of God. Bel showed him a drawing of it in a red-inked scroll, and one of Alexander of Macedon, who understood the true nature of power, and whom, Bel said, Judas resembled, a fact that excited them both.

When desire surged, Bel helped him express it with infinite variety. Judas learned the raw pleasure of taking a cock in his ass, of swallowing semen, of exchanging it in kisses, the perverse delight of being bound, of being teased, of being sodomized with a tongue, a dildo, a half-dozen grapes. He'd spilled his seed all over the mazy house: he'd been taken against the garden wall, at the edge of the pool, bent over a table in the banqueting hall.

Recently, they'd started playing a new game, an adult version of hide and seek. Judas would count to a thousand while Bel disappeared, and finding him always meant a reward, a double reward because for those periods of separation terror overtook him, the sick fear that Bel had gone forever.

Once, he found Bel in the counting room, surrounded by rows of gold bricks and piles of gems, earthen jars lining the shelves, each stamped with a snaky symbol. Bel sat almost chastely in a throne, his hands folded neatly in his lap, but with his thumbs extended and shining with oil; Judas backed onto them, using Bel as a chair of his own.

Another time, after a scarily long search, Judas discovered Bel in an anteroom secreted behind the mosaic of a wolf: a touch of the wolf's grey stone snout, and a panel slipped aside, revealing Bel, who stroked the flank of the same creature, an action repeated in a huge mirror. Life-sized and carved of supple painted wood, the wolf sprang from the wall, poised to take its mate. Bel pointed to the animal's gleaming phallus and said, "I want to see him take you, Judas. I want to watch your face while you skewer yourself. I want you to watch yourself."

The wolf's size worried him, but Bel gave Judas wine then bent him over the wolf's back, licking and wetly kissing until Judas begged to be the animal's bitch. He crawled slowly backward, letting the wolf penetrate him with infinite slowness as much for his own pleasure as for Bel's, who stood behind him, making lewd comments. His face in the mirror was flushed and bestial. When Judas was fully impaled, stretched impossibly tight, Bel moved in front and offered Judas his stiff cock, and between these double pleasures Judas came so hard that he passed out. Afterward, he found bite marks on his shoulder.

Above all, loneliness didn't exist in Bel's house. Not like the city, where the size of your purse defined you, where pain was so natural no one saw it or cared, a place of corruption and ugliness, with its scored buildings and shit- filled streets. It had corrupted him, and if he returned there, the city would gut him and hang his rotting corpse from the tallest tree.

Here was safety, comfort, and ecstasy, so when Bel told him that duty called him away for a few hours, obligations he could no longer avoid, Judas panicked. "Do you have to go?"

"If I didn't, I wouldn't leave."

"What will I do while you're gone?"

"Shore up your energy. I intend to fuck you for hours when I return."

"Will you think of me while you're away?"

"Of course. I'll think of your mouth, your cock, your ass, and new ways to use them."

"Can't I come with you? I can sit in a corner. You won't even notice I'm there."

"You'd be a distraction, my beautiful whore, to me and to everyone who sees you. I'd have to kill my associates for their attention to you, and I need them alive for now." Bel untangled himself from Judas' arms. "Be good and I'll bring you a surprise." With a quick kiss on Judas' forehead, he disappeared down a hallway.

Judas couldn't stay still. First, he roamed the library, opening drawers at random. Among his discoveries: a cracked blue eggshell the size of his fist; the discarded skin of a ruby-hued snake; the corpses of a thousand butterflies; a dozen gold arrows covered in shimmering blue liquid still wet to the touch; a blackened apple core containing a pearly tooth; what he thought was a ball made of black fur, but when it squeaked he dropped it to the floor where it skittered off.

His throat dry from the dust of Bel's collection, he went to the ever-full banqueting hall for a glass of wine. One glass became two, two multiplied to six, and soon it soured in his gut, becoming rage, the need to destroy, to hurt, to punish. He heaved over a table and fruit spilled to the floor, a riot of flesh and juice. With one arm extended he ran at another, knocking down plates of bread and cheese, and pissed into the mess. He threw honey cakes at the walls, where they splattered and stuck, then tossed pies that exploded with a satisfying gasp.

Still raging, he lurched to the bath chamber to smash bottles of myrrh and oil. He pulled mirrors from the walls, cracking them against the stone, an eon of bad luck, and dragged the couch where Bel first sodomized him to the edge of the pool, toppling it--then slipped on a patch of oil and fell in after it. The shock took the edge off his rage, made him too sober, so he returned to the banqueting hall for more wine.

The room was pristine, without a single trace of his actions. This surprised him less than infuriated him, that he couldn't mark this place, that he couldn't leave a trace of his presence, just like Bel, who had left him alone and would forget him, this insignificant pile of shit.

His eyes flaming, he went to hide, to lick his wounds, and ended up beside the carved wolf, curling in the recess beneath its belly. The mirror reflected this without mercy, and Judas shut his eyes against the pathetic truth, kept them shut until sleep came.

That was where Bel found him. "Did you miss me?" He knelt beside Judas, a package in one hand.

Judas wanted to say, "I hate you, I hate this place, don't ever leave me," but instead buried his face against Bel's chest.

"I brought you a few things. Do you want to try them now or would you rather rest?"

"Are you going to fuck me?"

"That would be the end result of my gifts."

"I'm not sure that I deserve them."

"Because of your tantrum while I was gone? Yes, I know about that," Bel said. "And you'll be punished for it, don't worry."

Judas shivered. "Then show me." Gifts or punishment--it didn't matter.

"Not yet. I want you to see yourself only when I'm done." Bel encouraged Judas to his feet, positioning him before the mirror, then pulled a silk cloth from his waist to blindfold him, another cloth to bind his hands behind his back. "So you won't be tempted to touch your pretty little prick until I allow it."

A rustle as Bel opened the package. Many sounds after that, many sensations, some translatable, others not, but all arousing as Bel lavished him with mysterious attention. And much attention was required: Bel neglected not a single part of him, head to toes, back to front, and while the touches, strokes, brushes, and other unnameable actions were not intended to arouse, Judas' cock hardened and stayed hard.

"Do you know the story of Omphale and Hercules?" Bel asked at one point. "That's what inspired me. I had to visit a greasy Roman dog today who had the story painted on one of his walls."

Judas only shook his head, hoping he wouldn't come before Bel had finished.

"She was the queen of Lydia, and to cure himself of madness Hercules became her slave for a year." Bel untied the cord at Judas' wrists, performed a few more steps of the ritual, then ordered Judas to keep his hands crossed behind his back. Next, he tied the silk cord around Judas' waist to keep Judas' cock flat. "Almost done," he said, his voice thick with lust. "You should see yourself, Judas...So Omphale was a queen and thrilled to have Hercules in her power. Who wouldn't be? He was strong enough to hold the Heavens on his shoulders, even if he gave up that power. Are you ready? Omphale's greatest triumph was to emasculate the hero: she forced him to dress as a girl."

The blindfold fell to the floor while Judas blinked against the glare of a hundred candles. When his vision cleared, he saw a girl standing before him, a beautiful sluttish girl in a transparent tunic cut to her thighs, her nipples and lips rouged, her eyes kohl-lined, her hair arranged in an elaborate design and sprinkled with gold, her skin shining with perfume, her feet encased in gold sandals that laced up her legs. There were rings in her ears, on her fingers and toes, and a slave collar around her throat.

Before her was a stand affixed with a rectangular bar that reached her waist, and she unclasped her hands to grip it while Bel leered, naked, over her shoulder.

"Are you going to fuck me now?" she asked, then realized her mistake when Bel's eyes darkened. "Are you going to fuck me now, Master?"

"So hard," Bel growled. "Just the way you like it." He yanked up the tunic and pushed himself into Judas' oiled hole.

In the mirror, the girl's eyes went wide, her face flushing as Bel filled her. When he began to ram into her, she cried, "Please, harder, more." She gasped when Bel reached around to pinch one red nipple, and whimpered when the cord dropped from her waist.

"Don't touch yourself," Bel whispered. "Just hold the bar and take my cock."

Judas didn't need the pressure of his hand. Not with the heat and stretch of Bel's cock, the sting of his words, the lurid beauty of the scene before him. They were outside all rules tonight, beyond all convention, and Judas couldn't resist anymore, couldn't stop himself from coming and from knowing what made him come.

For every obscenity that Bel murmured in his ear, for every thrust of his cock, for every shot of semen that hit the mirror, Judas said, "I love you."

*

Something was wrong. That was his first thought. As sleep fled, the facts fell together. Bel was gone, no warm body pressed against his. He was in his old room, the one he slept in that first night before Bel took him into his bed, before the voices...

Judas heard them again: two voices drifting up from below. For a second he wondered if he'd dreamed the whole thing, if all that passed between him and Bel had been a fantasy. But he still wore the Roman whore's tunic, and Bel's semen was drying on the backs of his thighs. No need to panic. Aza worked for Bel, so no surprise that he returned, a return surely connected to Bel's earlier departure. Business, nothing more. Except...

As on that first night, the sick sense clung that they were talking about him. But that was to be expected, surely; he was embedded in Bel's life, and lovers would speak of each other, wouldn't they? Fighting the waves in his belly, he scrubbed his face clean, untangled his hair, then removed the tunic. When he went to put on the old one, Bel's key gleamed from its folds, and, not sure why, tucked it away in a hidden pocket.

This time he skipped the balcony and went directly downstairs, creeping softly, more softly than before. At the doorway to the garden, he was more careful this time, not touching the house, sure that it whispered its secrets to Bel. As he listened, biting the tips of his fingers, the words from the temple took shape.

"--with that tight little hole, he's a bargain at thirty silver pieces," Bel was saying.

"If he's so good, why sell him to me?"

"Because I like a challenge and you like a whipping-boy. Besides, I've picked up a Roman pig with enough tricks up his used ass to satisfy even me."

"I'd have to try him first. See if his ass is as tight as you promise, especially after all you've given it."

"Easily done. Judas," Bel called. "Judas! Come down. I have another surprise for you." More quietly to Aza, he added, "He'll probably cry at first. I suggest whipping that trait out of him."

Judas ran. He knew this, knew that his feet moved, that his heart pounded, that he had to find a way out or jump from the highest balcony, even as part of him stayed rooted in place, trapped on the outskirts of the garden. He might've found that balcony and jumped, too, if the house hadn't conspired against him. It wanted to keep him here, wanted to drink his shame and hurt, but Judas finally understood how to defeat it: whenever the house threw up another corridor, another turn, Judas kept running straight.

The right choice, because a door appeared, a massive one with lead crisscrossing the black wood. Not the door he first entered, but it didn't matter: escape was escape, and he pulled out the silver key.

The lock refused it, and he nearly gave up, nearly curled up on the floor until they found him, those fucking animals, those dirty lying sacs of shit. Rage was good. Rage was an old friend, and it would lead him from this cursed house. Steadying his hands, he tried the key again, and this time, with a grudging creak, the lock opened.

He left the key in it and stepped into the night.

Oh God, he thought. Oh God. Even under the moon he knew this place, recognized the dank smell of old smoke and something richer, darker. The temple ruins near the city's west wall, where children were gutted on altars and the earth would swallow you whole. The field of blood with its single dead tree

This time, he didn't scream, just began to run again, hoping the earth was hungry.

*

Judas lived like a wild dog in the city. He stole scraps, bit anyone who moved too close, screwed any hole he could find, slept in alleys beside one-eyed cats and rats with grey dragging bellies. Instead of speaking, he growled or barked or howled. He thought of Bel only in his dreams, where he pulled Bel's soul from his mouth and fed on it. When a Roman matron he fucked behind a bathhouse tried to adopt him, he snatched her purse and threw it to a leper.

This was freedom.

Sniffing around a butcher's shop one day, hoping for a piece of fallen meat, he heard someone laugh. The sound cut him. It was a Roman walking from a tavern with his friend, stinking of beer, money, and pleasure. In the heat, the oil in his hair trickled down his back, leaving greasy tracks, and he limped from a missing toe. Here was meat.

Judas followed them, hoping for a dark lane where he could wrap his hands around the man's fat red neck and squeeze until the bloated fucker admitted that life was shit, that this was hell, that happiness was a lie, so Judas would knew he wasn't alone. But they skirted solitary places, heading instead to spy on a preacher, one of the hundreds of itinerant ones who plagued the city like locusts. He followed them anyway. Crowds were good for food, for fucking.

"They say the crazy bastard is telling everyone to throw away their money."

"May Jupiter piss in his mouth for that blasphemy!"

"It's Bacchus all over again, running around swearing he's the son of a god. At least our boy knew how to have a good time. No wine, women, and song for this idiot. His prick's probably fallen off."

"And they think this prickless wonder's a threat?"

"He's got the people's ear. Nothing the stinking plebs like better than a loudmouthed shit-disturber."

With Judas still trailing, they reach a square crammed with spectators. Most were poor, thin frayed robes over thin frayed bodies, dirt living in the lines of their faces; a few were gold-showered, here only to watch the circus. At the center stood a man ringed with eleven others. Thinner than his audience, his skin planed to a single layer, he seemed to have too many bones. His large ears poked through his messy brown hair. Judas knew his type: he'd speak a few pretty words, flatter the crowd, then bleed them dry. He was meat, too.

But when the man began to speak, his words were sharp dry riddles about money, sin, and corruption. Not a crowd-pleaser, since most of the audience had no money and therefore little ability to sin or stop corruption, while the riddles tired them. Grumbles started. He seemed to take this personally and tempered his speech; his mild brown eyes showed hurt.

"Son of God, my ass," someone muttered.

The man heard this and went still. Then he walked over to the speaker, a muddy woman with features like clumps of earth. She had no age. A little girl leaned against her, clutching her skirt, a barely living stick; whenever she coughed, blood spattered. Judas could smell death on her.

"Do you love God?" the man asked the mother.

"I do, but I'm starting to think he has no love for me." She shook her head. "No, I guess that's not right. I know there's love. It just seems far away. Like the stars."

"What would bring it closer?"

"I don't know," she said, and her face crumpled. "I don't know anything anymore. My little girl's dying, my husband's gone with the devil, and..."

"Is this the girl?" When the woman nodded, the man laid his hand on the girl's head, which fit in his palm like a grapefruit. His nails were black. "Be whole," he said.

The girl, caught mid-cough, suddenly stopped, shook her head as if a fly buzzed inside it, and dropped to the ground.

The woman shrieked and scooped her up. "You killed her, you goddamn trickster! You killed my baby!"

Fists were raised, and the eleven men began to move. Then the girl's eyes fluttered. Her skin turned from old milk to a healthy pink-tinged brown. The smell of death was gone. "Momma? Momma, I feel good. Can I go play?" She broke free from her stunned mother and skipped to a little boy with a ball.

Her mother fell to her knees and kissed the dusty hem of the man's robes. As he drew her up, she opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out, though her tears flowed freely.

He went to walk away, and, finding her voice, she called after him, "Who are you? Who shall I say healed my daughter?"

"It doesn't matter who I am," he said. "Tell people that God loves her, that he loves everyone who lives as a child."

It was a trick, but the crowd bought it, eager for miracles, drawing around the man and pushing Judas too close. He growled low, and the man, passing nearby, turned in his direction. Before Judas crouched, he saw shock, as if the man was remembering Manoah, his wife, and the angel with the terrible face.

With that look, Judas' path become clear: he would play Bel to this arrogant bastard who thought he was the agent of God. He would seduce him, discard him, and show him that, no matter how much he wished it, God didn't give a shit.

*

The landscape shielded him. A tree here, a boulder there. No one saw him, but he watched, listened, bided his time. When the right moment came, he'd know.

Meanwhile, he stored information. John, the older man with the ox's shoulders and sharp nose, was second in command, the surrogate father. A threat. So was Peter, who walked faster than the rest, always spinning around to toss out ideas, waving rough red hands. His dark hair stood on end, and he made the master smile. That's what they called him, "Master" or "Lord," titles he accepted without question, though the nervous one who always rubbed his chin called him "Jesus" once.

They walked until a town loomed on the horizon and the sun began to droop, settling under a patch of the olives trees bordering the wall, a stream at their feet. As they unrolled pallets and lit a fire, Judas considered his options. Too late to approach him now; with darkness coming he'd expect a thief, not a lover. Better wait until the next day, speak to him after he preached, play the wide-eyed disciple.

Judas left them, following the stream under the trees' cover. A swim to cut the filth would improve his chance at seduction, so at a safe distance he stripped, tucked his clothes under a rock, and entered the water. The stream was narrow, no wider than the length of a man, and deep only to the hip, but refreshingly cool. No perfume or oil to...

He dove, brushing sand with his fingertips while fish darted. Natural here, quiet and natural, and he closed his eyes--then burst to the surface when something warm and solid touched his head.

"Are you trying to kill me?" he sputtered.

"No, to save you from drowning," Jesus said. He had countable ribs.

"I was getting clean!"

"Call it what you like. Now you're doubly clean."

"Because you touched me? One pat on the head, and it's all good?"

"Something like that."

Forget seduction--Judas wanted to punch this conceited idiot in the face. "I saw your magic hands in action today. Nice show, but next time you might want to add some lions and jugglers for the full effect."

"You're not what I expected."

"I suppose God told you I was coming?"

"I have dreams," Jesus said. "Sometimes angels speak to me."

"You're crazy."

"So they say. Makes the truth easier to deny."

Judas didn't want to ask, but his tongue had other plans. "Well, I know you're dying to tell me: what did you expect?"

"Charm. Subtlety."

"How disappointed you must be."

"I shouldn't be surprised," Jesus said as if to himself. "Charm is painted deception. Subtlety's a liar's game. Easy to resist."

"Charm's not exactly your strong suit, either."

"We have something in common then." With a faint smile, Jesus waded to the shore. Tiny silver fish scales gleamed on the backs of his thighs. Once robed, he called, "What are you waiting for?"

"What do you mean?"

"You're coming with us, aren't you?"

"Why would I do that?"

"You have your reasons. And I need someone to carry the purse."

"You're going to give me your money? You don't even know me."

"So tell me what I need to know. What matters most."

"I'm a thief and a liar. I'll hurt you in the end."

"Then you're wrong, Judas. I do know you. Now get some clothes on and join us for supper."

*

Supper was bread and dried fish. Judas ate it in the shadows away from the others, his eyes on the flames, the purse beside him. No one spoke.

Only Jesus looked at ease, eating his meal with obvious pleasure. As he brushed the crumbs from his beard, he said, "We pleased God today."

John nodded. "The mother's faith was strong. She'll tell people how you healed her daughter, and God's love will spread."

As if he'd forgotten, Jesus' brows knit, then he echoed John's nod. "Oh yes, the mother's faith was also pleasing to God."

The silence returned.

"I've said before that following me means being hated," Jesus said, watching clouds sail past the moon. "The more people hate my followers, the men I've chosen, the more love I'll show them. You might want to remember that."

At once, John asked Judas about his family, Peter offered him the last crust, while James fumbled in his pack for a blanket, saying, "The rocks can be hard."

Judas accepted the blanket, spread it on the ground, and lay with his back turned.

"Sleep is a good idea. It's been a long day." Jesus yawned so loudly his jaw cracked. "Why don't you all lie down and catch some rest?"

"What about you, Master?" John asked.

"I need to pray, but I'll be back soon."

Judas could hear him moving into the trees while the others unrolled pallets and nested around the fire. He shut his eyes, yawned equally loudly, and within minutes was breathing with careful regularity. It didn't take long before John and Peter engaged in a hushed conversation.

"That boy is trouble," John whispered.

"We can kiss our purse goodbye," Peter muttered back. "I give him a day."

"That's not what I mean. Have you seen the way he looks at the master? And the way the master looks at him?"

"Yes, but what of it? The master chased off Satan; it's not likely a pretty boy will tempt him."

"It's what's inside Judas that worries me, the blend of rage and longing. The rabbi's safe from offers of worldly power, less so from someone with that level of need. Saving him would be like saving the devil himself."

"I thought you had more faith in him."

"I have all the world's faith in God, but Jesus is God wrapped in flesh. Just because you don't see him struggling doesn't mean he's not. He's got the strength of fifty men, true, but he's still a man, and what defines us more than need?"

"You can't think the master would take Judas into his bed?"

"What's worse," John asked, "need fulfilled or need denied?"

Soon their voices tapered off, replaced by sandpaper snores. Judas counted eleven sources then quietly echoed Jesus' path. He found him soon enough, kneeling with his face to the sky.

At the crunch of his feet, Jesus shifted but remained on his knees. "Are you here to pray with me, Judas?"

"No."

"Then you can leave me alone with my God."

"Does He need you more than I do?"

Jesus sighed and got to his feet a fraction out of reach. "You need God's love, Judas, and prayer will help you find it."

"You're the son of God, so why should I look up there when you're right here?"

"Because I'm a man and God is pure spirit. Pure love." In the green dark of the leaves, there was something of Bel in Jesus, some wisp in the line of his body.

"So if I asked you to kiss me, you wouldn't?"

"I...No, I wouldn't."

"What if that's the only way to save me? What if that's the one thing I need to become someone else?"

"I'd have to find another way."

"At least tell me you want to."

"It's not a matter of wanting or not wanting. It's--"

"Fuck you," Judas said, and walked away.

On his blanket outside the ring of men, Judas counted stars until the moon set.

Jesus remained in the woods.

*

The sun continued to rise and set.

Sometimes, watching Jesus move like an arrow through the world, Judas felt something so rich and dreadful he couldn't speak for hours after it struck. Other times, he'd feel fury, even hate, at Jesus' undiluted goodness. Jesus put his hands on the sick, the blind, the leprous, the mute, the dregs of a society that fed on cash and vomited the poor. He helped John when he stumbled, passed Simon the bread, washed Peter's hair when a detractor threw an egg, yet every night when Judas went to him, asking for a single kiss, Jesus refused.

Oh, Jesus offered reasons, a thousand reasons under the moon, flesh and temptation, God and love, eternity and the purity of the soul, but words didn't alter facts: Jesus would touch the rotten green skin of a diseased man, even touch his closest supporters, but wouldn't touch him. Lying on the edge of a river, Judas would study his reflection, hoping his inner corruption would move to the surface so Jesus would finally break.

Once Judas even kissed a leper, a gangrenous creature with half his face fallen off, willing the disease to take him. Worse, once he even prayed to God, slipping away from the group to find a hidden spot, and asked either to be infected or wiped clean of his past. He even fought sleep, would've cut off its head with a sword if he could, just to avoid the dreams where Bel and Jesus shared him.

Nothing changed, except that more people hated Jesus and more people loved him, while at night Jesus would shout in his sleep about death, betrayal, and redemption.

Despite this, Judas stayed with him like the dog he was, although in every city there were men and women eager to make him their pet. He was fueled by the ugly wish that one day pity would overtake Jesus' disgust or that Judas' sin would peel away like a scab and leave him whole and worthy.

This went on for months, might have gone on forever. Then they went to Bethany, and the sun fell into the sea.

*

Riches bred boredom, and the Pharisee was a collector. Jesus the hated, Jesus the loved, Jesus who spit in earth and healed a man's eyes, was a prize, so the man invited him to a feast in his honor. A public invitation to a public feast, and Jesus went so many would hear him preach.

The Pharisee lived in a mansion on a hill, all columns and ornaments, money poured into stone, slapped across its face. There were people everywhere, a cluster of butterflies in purple, red, and gold, but they ate like wolves, packs of them stripping the flesh from the Pharisee's table. Wine spilled. The grease from chicken and lamb rose thick in the air. Candles coughed wax and smoke. A harp and flute fought with the shouts of laughter.

Jesus looked tense, his thin bones drawn together, his fingers tapping. He ignored his food while a storm brewed behind his eyes. When Judas tried to reach him, the crowd refused to part, jewels locking them together. Jesus had to be warned: there were rumors of spies, with jealousy and spite settling into the bellies of his enemies, and this wasn't the place for a whirlwind of sharp angry words.

Then the woman appeared. Coarsely pretty, with tangled black hair that escaped from her shawl and a scar on the side of her chin, she carried an alabaster box. The crowd sucked in its sides as she passed and snapped whispers at her bare heels. A Greek symbol was tattooed on her ankle.

"The whore dares to come..."

"What's in the box? Her castoff virtue?"

"They say she had seven devils in her at once..."

"Seven dicks, more like..."

"We should stone the dirty slut..."

She ignored them, didn't even glance their way, just moved with purpose toward Jesus. Twin suns glowed on her cheeks, casting light in her eyes. John called to her, asked her business here. He spoke to air.

As she reached him, Jesus rose, extending his hand, and asked her name. She began to shake so hard that her box fell with a clatter to the floor. Her full pink mouth opened then shut, opened then shut like a new flower afraid of the sun. With a sudden intake of breath that swelled her breasts, she began to cry, loud, terrible sobbing that unleashed a flood on Jesus' feet. In another room, her honesty might've broken more than two hearts.

When Judas saw Jesus' amazement, he returned to the edge of Bel's garden. Sick clutching rage, punches of jealousy, the primal urge to run until he fell off the world. Even worse when the woman sank to the ground, cast off her blue shawl, and began to wipe Jesus' tear-streaked feet with her long wild hair as if scared she'd contaminated him, although Jesus' face read only unbearable tenderness.

The oil conjured something black and rotting in Judas, as the whore, this stinking whore, rubbed spikenard on Jesus' feet, and Jesus let her, said nothing about flesh and temptation and purity before God, just let her stroke and rub and caress him like he was more precious than the oil itself. He let this whore do that, but not him. Not him. Not him...

Shoving the guests aside, Judas pushed forward until he reached the whore. "If you're so devoted to Christ," he snapped, "why not take the three hundred coins this oil cost and give it to the poor? Why not show charity rather than anointing him like an idol?"

The bitch didn't answer, didn't hear him, too busy worshiping at her own personal altar. But Jesus did. "The poor will always be here, despite my best efforts. I won't. She's acknowledging this. She understands."

Judas tasted blood and wondered if this was the first sign of his transformation, if the cancer inside him was finally emerging. His question had prompted others, and he backed away while Jesus answered them, the whore like a dog at his feet. The wrong whore. The wrong dog.

He found a door and opened it. Empty and safe, an unused guest room, and he closed himself away. With the spikenard still cloying even here, Judas went to the window and breathed in the night air, olives and oranges and the wet dew on flowers.

A click, a beat of air behind him. Someone had entered the room. Judas didn't move. Let the whore-lover come to him. Then he asked, shaming himself with the broken tone, "Why her? Why her and not me?"

"Because," a voice whispered in his ear, "Jesus knows I own you. He can smell me on you, my pretty little cock- sucker. That's why he can't bear to kiss you."

When Judas whirled around, fists clenched, Bel stepped out of reach, so he attacked another way. "You don't own me, you lying prick. We made a deal and it still holds, whether you liked it or not."

"Oh, I liked it, Judas. Don't you remember how much I enjoyed kissing you? Jesus doesn't know what he's missing."

"I remember that you tried to sell me to your friend."

"Is that what you thought? It was another game! I knew you were listening, just like the first night. The whole point was to provoke you."

Judas' head was splitting in two. All of him was. "You're lying."

"Would I be here if I were lying? I've been looking for you for months."

"I don't believe you."

"I'm the one who should be acting hurt and angry, Judas. You left me without a word. How would I know you'd take me seriously? You always enjoyed our games before. You did earlier that day--unless it was all an act. Unless you were using me."

"I wasn't using you. You know that."

"And then I hear that you've run off with a pack of holy madmen. You, who was never happy unless my cock was in you. I even thought..."

"What?"

"I even thought you'd taken this Jesus as your lover. At least until tonight, when I saw him with that woman. Someone who'd taken you to bed would never look twice at anyone else--not like that. I haven't."

Judas' thoughts were trapped in a wheel, spinning and spinning. "That's hard to believe."

"Judas, why are you still trying to hurt me? Don't you know it's killing me to stand here and not touch you? Or was I right that first night, and you do find me ugly, sleeping with me only for a roof over your head?"

"No! That's not true. You know that's not true."

"I just want a kiss. That's all. To know you felt something for me. To know you didn't stay because you thought you had no choice."

The kiss was soft as Mary's tears on Jesus' feet, then intense as the look on Jesus' face when she knelt before him, hot as Bel always was, with the lightning force under his skin. The kiss was an arrow aimed in a familiar direction, and Judas didn't fight it, not with his skin starved. The wall accepted his back, and he stroked Bel's long liquid hair.

"Jesus will never love you like this," Bel said. In the smoky light his eyes were split plums with gold pits. Then he took Judas' cock in his mouth.

Judas remembered Mary's flowery mouth, how it opened and closed; his heart repeated that pattern, faster and faster, and Bel sucked him to the same beat, wild and lewd as always. The pleasure was hollow as a cracked blue eggshell left in a drawer. It spread through his body, but stayed close to his skin, never sinking deeper, not where it mattered.

Back in his thieving days, his stolen objects brought him the same cold relief, never fitting the wound. Bel was the same, collecting him as a necklace or a comb, as the Pharisee did with Jesus. It was an age of collection and only Jesus escaped it, more whole than anyone; his followers knew this, tried to warm their hands on his light.

When he tried to push Bel away, Bel wouldn't stop, just glanced behind him like a cat at a noise in the street.

The door hinges creaked.

"No. No." Judas came at the sight of Jesus' shocked face, couldn't hold back, couldn't do anything but pour himself down Bel's throat in a very thin shadow of ecstasy. The window beckoned.

Bel rose in that flame-flickering way, no shame in his stance, just smirking hard and licking his lips. "Greetings, little brother."

"Judas," Jesus said. The room rang with sorrow. "Oh Judas, what have you done?"

As Bel shook himself like a dog, wings burst free from his back, sooty as old ash. "He betrayed you. And he'll do it again. I own him, this boy you love more than anything in the world. Or used to love. He hates you now, Judas. Can't you feel it radiating from him? Hate and disgust and--"

Jesus made a sign with his hands and Bel hurtled into the corner. He crouched there, his lips pressed tight, his eyes on fire.

"I'm sorry." Judas covered himself. "I'm sorry. You were right never to touch me. I'm poison. Forgive me."

"You want me to forgive you?"

"Of course you can't. I know that. I'm sorry about him. Truly sorry. I didn't know. I wanted to hurt you."

"Judas, I'm the one who should ask forgiveness."

The thing in the corner tried to howl, could only gurgle instead.

"You're crazy," Judas said. Or he was. Or the world was.

"So you've told me."

"You want forgiveness? You? After what I did? After what I've done? You don't know me, Jesus. I slept with him. I did things to him and he did them to me."

"And the woman downstairs sold herself for money to a thousand men. She stole from them. And she'll stand beside me at Judgement Day, Judas, because she asked for forgiveness and she received it. From me and from herself."

"You love her."

"Downstairs she sacrificed everything, dignity, money, pride. All for love. So, yes, I love her. But not...I find flesh complicated. Mortal things complicated. It's easier to talk about God and sin than what's inside me on the human level. I hate to say it, but when something's obvious even to that pile of shit on the floor...I love you. In a pure, spiritual way. And...the other way. The human way." He paused for breath, his face flushed. "Is that all right?"

He heard never heard Jesus speak this way, all pieces and pain, the riddles and confidence gone. It touched him more than Bel's lust ever could, and made belief the easiest thing in the world. "You love me?"

"More than anything or anyone else on earth."

"Are you...I mean, is that allowed?"

Jesus actually smiled. "Probably not, but it's too late now. Let's go. We have things to talk about." He offered Judas his hand.

His fingers were strong and warm, arrows left in the sun. He almost forgot the thing on the floor. "What about him? Belial?" His tongue tripped on the word while the creature hissed at its name.

"It only has as much power as you let it." Jesus made another sign, a casual dismissive flick of his wrists, and Bel shrieked then darted through the window on crooked wings.

*

There was a vortex at the center of the world.

As with so many other things, Judas had missed this. Now, he felt its full force, how it sucked goodness and mercy into its belly. Some men called it sin. Some called it chaos. Judas had called it Bel, Belial, who had once fallen from Heaven into darkness. Whatever its name, its power was growing, fed on the weak flesh of men.

Once, Judas thought this vortex lived inside him, but Jesus proved him wrong. The next step was to stop it, and Jesus had a plan. Or a birthright. It involved a terrible favor.

"I don't think I can do it," Judas said.

Jesus squeezed his hand. "It has to happen. If it's done with love, then I can bear it. Only then."

"I'm afraid."

"So am I, but this isn't just about us."

"I know. But...What about what he said? That it will start `a new era of sin'? Aren't we just doing what he wants?"

"There will always be sin. This way, though, the slate's wiped clean."

"Are you sure?"

"Sure as I can be. Which means, mostly." Jesus rested his head on Judas' shoulder. "I can't deny part of me wishes there were some other way."

"Me too."

They sat quietly together on the hillside, watching the city sleep.

"When did it start raining?" Judas asked sleepily, touching his damp cheek.

The sun rose before them.

*

It was Jesus' fault, the economics of his faith. "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's," he once said, and if Judas had to betray the thing he held most precious in the world, then, the future of that world aside, he intended to take some personal retribution. A simple pleasure weighted against inhuman pain, but it was the nature of men to couch their suffering in simple pleasures.

He didn't tell Jesus.

Knowledge of this retribution, the meaning at its heart, allowed him to betray Jesus without weeping, allowed him to pocket thirty dirty coins without killing the men who gave them. It kept his tears hidden during the final meal and the sleep after it, kept him from rushing to Jesus while he prayed and begging him to run, to hide, to live out his life as a man. It stopped him from screaming that this was a perversion, that Jesus didn't deserve this, that Judas would give up his own life a thousand times to spare him.

When the crowd came, the devils in the skin of men, a thin thread of happiness wound through him. Barely there, true, almost drowned in sorrow, but he clung to it, let it move him to his feet from the waking disciples, let him stare into the mild brown eyes of the man he had to kill. The man who loved him. The man he loved. That's why he did it, this selfish human act. Because they were men, because they loved, because this would be the first and only time.

Judas kissed him. It was true sweetness, transcending lust and hunger, and in that instant Judas knew pure goodness. He was whole.

When Jesus said, "Judas, have you betrayed me with a kiss?", there was in his eyes a simple, earthly pleasure.

Then they took him away.

Judas kept his fingers on his lips during the walk to the broken gate near the city's west wall. He wanted to wait, wanted to be there for the trial, for the hammer and nails, for the final expiration, but Jesus had insisted. "You have to do it before I die," he'd said. "Or it will be too late."

He went to the tree near the ruined temple, the tall leafless one, and cut his hand as he moved a smashed pillar beneath it. A raven appeared on one of the tree's bare branches. It shook itself like a dog and Belial sat there, his wings still crooked.

"There's nothing more beautiful than despair," the devil crowed, as Judas wrapped the rope around his neck and climbed onto the pillar.

"This isn't despair," Judas said, reaching into the purse at his waist. "It's love."

And he jumped in a shower of coins.

The End

 

 

 


End file.
